“Damn.” She pushed the button. “Detective Pallino.”
She listened, clarity slicing through the sexual haze. “When?”
She looked over at Dante, whose lazy smile died as he read her expression. She slid off his lap, regret hollowing her belly as she caught the disheveled look of his hair and the ridge pressing incessantly against the zipper of his jeans.
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” Still trying to gather her wits and catch her breath, she put the phone in her pocket as she looked at Dante. “Another murder in the alley.”
He was off the sofa in an instant, dragging his fingers through his hair. “Killed the same way as George?”
She nodded, tucking her shirt back into her pants.
“I’m coming with you.” He grabbed his shoes.
She should say no, but he was a part of this, too, and she felt a bit raw at the news there’d been another murder. She wanted him there with her. “Okay.”
They were on scene within fifteen minutes, the familiarity of the roped-off alley making her stomach roll. She had to hold it together. This was her case. She’d called Roman on the way over and he said he’d meet them there.
Gloved and their shoes covered, they moved toward the crime scene. The body was positioned on his back in the same location near the Dumpster. The victim looked like a businessman, had on a suit and nice shoes. His tie had been thrust to the side, his white shirt torn open and bloodied. From a distance she could already see his chest, see the carving of the heart. Her stomach rolled. He was beaten so badly his face was unrecognizable.
Blood was everywhere.
“This is worse than last time,” she said.
Anna squatted and surveyed the wreckage that was once a human being. The M.E. was already on the scene.
“Same as the last one,” Dr. Norton said. “Time of death was earlier tonight. Based on temperature and lividity I’d say maybe three or four hours ago.”
She looked at her watch. It was three in the morning. So anywhere from 11:00 p.m. to midnight.
Anna reached into the victim’s pocket and pulled out his wallet.
The familiar name and picture on the driver’s license stopped her breath. Her heart pounded so hard she heard the mad rush of her blood in her ears.
“No. This can’t be right.” She looked at the face, unrecognizable because of the blood and swelling. His hair was so matted with blood she hadn’t noticed the sandy coloring.
Dante dropped to his knees next to her. “What is it?”
She turned to him. “It’s Jeff.”
Dante frowned. “What? No, it’s not.”
Hands shaking, she handed him the driver’s license.
Dante looked at the license, then the body. “That’s Jeff?”
Anna bowed her head. “God, Dante.” She didn’t know what to do, what to say.
“It can’t be.”
“It is.” The face was distorted and swollen, but it was Jeff’s hair, his body.
“You know this vic?” Richard asked.
She nodded. “From high school.”
Richard laid his hand on her arm. “I’m sorry, Anna.”
This changed everything. It was what she was afraid would happen when George had been found in the alley.
The murderer had started killing her guys.
She squeezed Jeff’s arm. “I’m so sorry.”
She hadn’t jumped on this fast enough and now everyone was in danger. Her gaze lifted to Dante, his face filled with hard anger as he stared down at Jeff’s body.
Her misery turned to fury. This had to stop. She had to hold it together. It was her job to be objective. She continued searching the body, so glad it wasn’t Jeff’s sweet face staring back at her. At least he didn’t look like himself as she reached into his inner jacket pocket. When she pulled out the white bag, she cursed.
“Drugs,” she said to Dante, who grimaced.
“Come on.” Dante cast her a disbelieving look.
She bagged it and handed it over to the CSU team.
There was blood spatter around the body, this time the crime scene not so neat. Blood pooled under Jeff’s head.
“His skull is likely fractured,” Richard said. “I don’t know if he was hit with something or if your killer pounded his head into the pavement. I’ll be able to tell more once I autopsy him. Again, no gunshot wounds or other obvious signs of stabbings other than the carving here.”
Pain racked her body. All she wanted to do was curl up and cry. Instead, she sucked it all inside, rose and finished working the scene. Because maybe this time there’d be some goddamn evidence they could use.
When Roman showed, Dante touched her arm. “I’ll tell him.”
She gave him a curt nod and went back to walking every square inch around the body with the forensics team. There had to be something here. No one was that good at hiding the evidence of his presence.
She lifted her head only when Roman cursed so loud several uniforms stopped and stared. He made eye contact with Anna, his face drawn with shock and sadness. She shook her head.
Not now. They could all fall apart later.
Roman came over to her, his face drawn, his skin pale. “What do we know?”
“Nothing. Same as last time. A lot of blood spatter, though. This time he was meaner.”
Roman squatted and lifted the cover over Jeff’s face.
Anna didn’t want to look again. It wasn’t Jeff anymore anyway.
“Jesus,” Roman muttered. “We need to find out who did this.”
“Do a canvas around this area,” she directed the uniforms, motioning to the people milling around the taped barrier at both ends of the alley. “They might be nothing more than gawkers, but they could be potential witnesses, too. And I want Forensics taking pictures of all those people. Our suspect could be lurking, getting off on revisiting the scene to watch the action.”
They began to wrap Jeff for transport. She had just seen him. He had been laughing and joking with all of them at her house. Anna’s heart clenched, the pain in her chest tightening to a near-unbearable level. Her scar throbbed and she rubbed at it with the heel of her hand.
You and me are one now, Jeff, in a way I never wanted.
Now there were two other people with matching scars like hers. And she was the only survivor.
She and one of the uniforms hit the other end of the alley to talk to the people there. No one saw anything, just happened to be leaving one of the bars when it closed and saw the police cars so came over to see what was going on. But they still took names and numbers to interview these people later. They might have been standing outside the club and seen whoever was in the alley. Often people saw something and didn’t even realize what they’d seen was important.
Anna walked outside the alley and down the street, turning the corner to get a view of the buildings that fronted the alley. It was all corporate and banking on both sides, so unlikely anyone would be inside, but she wanted to know.
She motioned Roman over. “Let’s find out what offices flank the alley. I want to know if anyone was pulling an all-nighter. Maybe looked down out their windows into the alley the nights of the murders. Maybe some corporate junkie on deadline.”
“You got it.” He laid his hands on her shoulders. “You gonna be okay?”
She lifted her gaze to his. “I’m so pissed right now I want to tear someone apart. But I’ll be fine as long as I’m working. We just need to find out who’s doing this.”
He nodded, his expression grave. “We will, honey.”
“We have to tell Ellen.”
He closed his eyes, opened them again. “I hadn’t thought about that. Want me to go with you?”
“No. Grab some uniforms, get into those office buildings and get that started. If we can pull a witness out of anyone in there, it could make this case. I’ll go talk to Mrs. Clemons.”
Dante came up behind Anna. “I’ll go with her. I was just over there to visit Ellen.”
Roman looked pained. “This is going to destroy her after just losing George.”
Dante put his arm around Anna’s shoulder. She felt the sting of tears and blinked them back.
This wasn’t about her grief. This was about finding a killer. Her pain could wait. “We’ll go do that before I head back to do my report.”
“I’ll get started on the list,” Roman said.
She nodded. “I’ll meet you back at the station.”
She turned and they all watched as Jeff’s body was loaded into the transport van.
Anna pulled Roman into a hug, squeezing him tight. She pulled back and searched his face. “You be careful. You know what’s going on here.”
He gave her a sober nod, then his gaze shifted to Dante. “You look out for her.”
“Not going anywhere.”
Telling Ellen was about as horrible as Dante predicted it would be, and had to have torn Anna up inside. He felt Anna tense up next to him when Ellen sobbed and turned her face into Dante’s shirt.
Anna remained stoic, did her job, gave her sympathies and let Dante handle most of it. Dante had put his arm around Ellen and held her when she would have crumpled to the floor. He knew how she felt, knew every kid who’d stayed with her was like one she’d given birth to.
“I’ll be in touch after the autopsy is completed and he’s released to the funeral home,” Anna had told her. The raw agony in Ellen’s eyes was enough to make Dante tear up. And nothing brought him to tears.
They’d tried Gabe’s phone a few times, but it had gone straight to voice mail. Dante wanted to deliver the news in person so he hadn’t even left a message. He’d catch up with Gabe as soon as he could.
They left Ellen’s and climbed back into Anna’s car. She sighed and leaned her head against the headrest.
“What now?” he asked.
“Now I need to drop you off. Then I want to go to Jeff’s place.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know where he was tonight, or where he was when he was taken to that alley. Maybe his house will give us some clues.”
She picked up her phone and called for the evidence team, then called Roman and asked him to meet her there.
“I can drop you off on the way.”
He slanted a look at her. “I’m not going home. And if you drop me off I’ll just follow you.”
The ride was silent, and he wasn’t surprised when she pulled up in front of his condo.
“Thought you were going to Jeff’s place.”
She put the car in Park and turned to face him. “This has to be dealt with first. I want you to pack up and go back to wherever it is you came from.”
He figured this was coming, knew she’d want to protect him.
“I’m not leaving, Anna.”
“You have to.”
He saw the fear in her eyes, the desperation, and knew he’d have to tell her everything in order to convince her he wasn’t going to die.
“Let’s go inside and talk about this.”
“Fine. I’ll help you pack and I’ll escort you to the airport.” She followed him inside.
Dante noticed her hand on the butt of her gun as he opened the door and flipped the lights on. He moved in front of her. “It’s okay. There’s no one here.”
“You sure about that?” she asked.
After tonight he wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
She shoved ahead of him. “I’m going to check your bedrooms if you don’t mind.”
He didn’t mind, but he wasn’t going to let her check them alone. He moved with her, his hand within reach of his own weapon. Once they cleared the house, she stood in the middle of the living room, her arms crossed.
“You have to leave, Dante.”
“I’m not going.”
“Are you insane? You realize there’s a killer out there who wants all of you dead.”
“Yes.”
“So you’re going to stay and do what? Paint a target on your back?”
“You want me to leave and let the other guys become targets? I can’t let that happen. Not when I could stay and possibly do something to stop it.”
She lifted her chin. “That’s my job.”
“Yeah, it is. And I can help.”
“Really, how? You’re not a cop. You don’t have the resources available to you that I do. You might be able to ride along with me now and then, but frankly you hinder my investigation and it would be easier for me to do my job if you’d just get the hell out of my way. It would be one more person I—one more potential victim I don’t have to worry about.”
One more person—what? He’d like to know what she was going to say before she stopped herself.
“You can’t anticipate what the killer will do, Anna. You don’t know who he’s going to target next.”
“No, I can’t. But I can sure as hell make sure it isn’t you.”
He wanted to explore how she felt about him. What had been about to happen before she’d gotten that phone call could have brought them closer together, at least physically.
He wanted to clear the cobwebs of the past. That’s why he’d come back. He wanted to be sure Anna was okay, that they were okay.
Now no one was okay.
“I can take care of myself. And I’m not leaving.”
He felt the boil of tension inside her as she stepped up to him and gave him a shove that was more frustration than anger. “Why are you being so goddamn stubborn about this?”
He slid his hands up her arms to wrap around her wrists, pulling her fully against him until her head rested on his chest. Holding her was killing him, making him want her. He wanted to wrap himself around her, inside her, until they both stopped hurting.
“My brother was murdered tonight. My foster father was killed a few days ago. There’s a potential serial killer on the loose targeting the people I care the most about, including you. Do you really think I’m going to walk away from that?”
She lifted her head to look at him. “You walked away before.”
The stab to his gut hurt like a cold, sharp knife. She’d said it to hurt him, to make him leave. And she was right. She didn’t trust him to stay when she needed him. “I deserved that.”
He saw the pain in her eyes and would have done anything to take it away. “Then leave now.”
“No. Not this time. Not again.”
“This is my job to do.”
“This is more than your job now. And I’m not leaving you alone to fight this bastard.”
She sighed. “He’s going to try to kill you.”
He nodded. “And probably you, too.”
“You’re not equipped to deal with someone like this. I can’t let you risk it.”
Dante’s lips curled. Maybe it was time to let her know who and what he really was. “Honey, I’ve killed more people than this guy ever will. Trust me, I can handle this crazy fucker.”